The present disclosure relates to modeling demand in a transportation system, such as a public bus, train or plane system. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to latent demand modeling as a function of the time of the day and the day of the week for a transportation system.
Many service providers monitor and analyze analytics related to the services they provide. One important analytic related to efficient operation is travel demand for a transportation system or a particular route in a transportation system. For example, public transportation vehicles may be equipped with an automated passenger counter configured to measure passengers boarding or alighting a vehicle at a particular stop. However, data from automated passenger counters is not collected regularly, and thus the information is difficult to accurately correlate to time and place. Additionally, if no one is at a stop, the vehicle typically will not stop unless there is a passenger wanting to get off the vehicle. Thus, such stops may be ignored completely and there is no registration of the stop with the automated passenger counter.
Additionally, public transportation vehicle routes are run irregularly throughout the day, and some routes are not run at all at certain hours such as late at night or early in the morning, e.g. from 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM. Thus, the actual number of passengers picked up at a stop, i.e., the demand at that stop, is not only dependent upon the time of the day but also the interval between vehicles servicing that stop. A longer interval will result in a higher number of passengers. However, this increase in passengers may not be related to the population or overall demand of the stop. Rather, the increase may be a result of a longer time interval between vehicles servicing that particular stop. As such, using existing technology and techniques to estimate demand results provides an incomplete analysis when modeling demand as a function of time of day and day of week.